1.6 Fields of Analysis in Media Informatics

In the wake of the pioneer works of the ethnographer and computer scientist Lucy Suchman (1987), ethnographic methods as fundaments of technological design have received a wide acceptance in the fields of CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) and HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and its neighboring disciplines. Numerous media scientists like Crabtree (2004), Randall, Harper and Rouncefield, (2007), Heath, Luff und Cambridge (1992), Hughes, Randall and Shapiro (1992) and Dourish (2006) have worked out important contributions to conceptualize ethnographic research in processes of design since then. With his approach in Design Case Studies, Wulf (2009) has suggested organizing design processes in three empirically designed steps of requirements—engineering, prototyping, and evaluation. Another important line of ethnographically based technology design emerges from the Scandinavian field of research in participatory design aiming at including the end user already at an early stage of the design (see Muller, 2009; Ehn/Kyng, 1987; Bødker, 1996 among others). Here, qualitative empirical methods as well as action research are combined with the aim of designing social processes that are based on the pillars 'empowerment,' 'democracy,' and 'innovation.'

These kinds of action research approaches are necessary within the scope of approaches to technological design because they allow us finding out how social practices change in the face of new locative media. Contrary to rather analytical and descriptive approaches this perspective is an indispensable part of a creative discipline that claims to help shaping social practice. Accordingly, design approaches in media information technology that are oriented to users and their practice are aiming at bringing together new media—like for example pervasive and locative computing systems—and actual practices in situ in order to interconnect them and to analyze the effects resulting from this interconnection. For this purpose new methods like that of the living lab have also been developed, which operates as the "testbed" (Hess/Ogonowski, 2010) in the territorial contexts of the everyday lives of the users.

Based on Susan Leigh Star's usage of the term infrastructure (Star/Ruhleder, 1994; Bowker/Star. 1999) that has developed in science and technology studies (STS) and their debate with Actor-Network-Theory and the analysis of large technological systems (LTS) (van der Vleuten, 2004; Hughes, 1983; Heinze/Kill, 1988), the term infrastructuring is being used by now in information technology for the activities establishing an infrastructure of media from the perspective of their users (Karasti/Syrjänen, 2004; Karasti/Baker, 2004; Pipek/Wulf, 2009). The verb 'to infrastructure' explicitly not only encompasses the creative tasks of creating technologies and configurating an infrastructure; it also signifies activities that allow us to discover and develop utilizations like locative and context sensitive applications. Mobile systems in particular are confronted with changing and dynamic contexts (places, situations, and terms of use). Their applications go back to sensor and positioning technologies in order to support the applications in situ. Depending on the ambient conditions, satellite supported positioning (GPS), detection devices via WLan routers and intensity appliances, RFID sensors (Eberspächer/von Reden, 2006; Kern, 2007) or various other sensor technologies like for example NFC (near field communication) are on hand (Finkenzeller, 2006) since an increasing number of mobile devices are equipped with them. By now it has been sufficiently studied what mobile devices are technologically able to provide. What is missing, however, are context- and user-based analyses regarding acceptance, adoption, usability and "learnability" of the new mobile systems (Broll et al., 2009; Nielsen, 2008).

Urban informatics (Ellison/Burrows/Parker, 2007; Foth, 2008) or community informatics play a central role as important branches of research, shaping new approaches to locating infrastructures. Community informatics encompasses the field of neighborhood informatics, its aim being to promote processes of building communal relationships through information and communication technologies (IKT). Initially this was an outgrowth of the Anglo-American realm, its view of an individualized society, and a resulting erosion of communal cohesion (Putnam, 2001). The connection of virtual and real communities on a local, regional, or global level and the analysis of new possibilities of fostering social interaction connected to it has spread into questions in the area of ICT4D (ICT for development) by now, where the potentials of community oriented approaches in foreign aid are being analyzed (O’Donnell/Ramaioli, 2004).

Urban informatics is questioning the dichotomy between cyberspace and real space, asking how collective interaction (within the frame of online communities) and networked interaction (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) are transformed locally into a socially important interaction and how users navigate between a collectively networked and spatially dispersed flow of information. Network analysis and questions of "Communities and Technologies" (Huysman/Wenger/Wulf, 2003) offer a multiplicity of links for research done in local communities, location-aware web search, and the geospatial web regarding the joint prism of community research and its sociological concepts (like for example the social capital) at its basis.

The problem of infrastructuring outlined above is connected to a perspective of media information technology that considers the adoption of technology and its use as a practice embedded in a social context in which community processes are formed. It is an insight of information technology and the history of technology as well that adopting and passing on the application of new technologies is taking place within communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) that contain social and cultural coherence which is very spatially connoted or which mediates heterogeneous needs by spatially arranging "boundary objects" (Star/Griesemer 1989). These spatial and situational arrangements have to be traced quite accurately in their technological design by way of ethnographic methods so that a precisely fitting space in the everyday life and work of the users can be allocated to these new technologies.